David Ben-Gurion Quotations

Not the absorption capacity of the land, but the creative ability of a people, is the true yardstick with which we can measure the immigration potentialities of the land.

After eighty, there are no enemies, only survivors.

Referring to Palestinian refugees: "We must do everything in our power to ensure that they never return.

Anyone who believes you can't change history has never tried to write his memoirs.

The acceptance of partition does not commit us to renounce Transjordan: one does not demand from anybody to give up his vision. We shall accept a state in the boundaries fixed today, but the boundaries of Zionist aspirations are the concern of the Jewish people and no external factor will be able to limit them.

Under no circumstances must we touch land belonging to fellahs or worked by them. Only if a fellah leaves his place of settlement, should we offer to buy his land, at an appropriate price.

Those who today murdered our people in an ambush not only plotted to murder some Jews but intended to provoke us... The Arabs stand to gain from such a development. They want the country to be in a state of perpetual pogrom.... Any further bloodshed [by the Jews] will only bring political advantage to the Arabs and harm us... Our strength is in the defense... and this strength will give us political victory if England and the world will know that we are defending ourselves rather than attacking.

Which are you first, a Jew or an American? A Jew.

We offer peace and neighborliness to all the neighboring states and their peoples, and invite them to cooperate with the independent Hebrew nation for the common good of all.

If I knew that it was possible to save all the children of Germany by transporting them to England, and only half by transferring them to the Land of Israel, I would choose the latter, for before us lies not only the numbers of these children but the historical reckoning of the people of Israel.